Empty Cradle
by Vilinye
Summary: Where did that blue cradle really come from? The Doctor says it's his, but we all know River's rule one is "The Doctor lies." A possible answer from the expanded universe.


Mine. It's my cot. I slept in it."

-The Doctor, A Good Man Goes to War

"Rule one. The Doctor lies."

-River Song, The Big Bang

"Isn't it dark? Isn't it cold? Seek out the future before you get old. Once there were children. This is their doom. Now all the people are born from the loom"

Cat's Cradle: Time Crucible

He's not sure where the TARDIS found a cot, much less one with Gallifreyan writing on the sides. But nobody ever slept in this cot before. Not Susan. Not his daughter. Not him.

There were no naturally born children on Gallifrey since the Pythia's curse. At least, not in this timestream. The last War mucked up history so much that even a Time Lord would be hard put to remember all the alternate histories. But in this one—the one that survived when the lock snapped shut—there were no children on Gallifrey.

It was a mercy, in a way. No children meant there were no faces that haunted his dreams(more than the others, he always remembered the children most). All the children of Gallifrey were woven by Looms, snatched from preexistence by technology and cold mathematics, the quote set by the government. Forty-five Cousins per House, to be replaced when death came for good.

They were all Loomed as young adults, anywhere from twelve to twenty. But he looked younger—eight Earth years—and he had a belly button. Oh, the nicknames he suffered because of that belly button. Snail and Wormhole were the nicer ones.

But that never happened.

Gallifrey had children, didn't it? Where did Susan come from if there were no children?

She came from the Looms, of course.

Most of the Gallifreyans didn't seem to mind Pythia's curse much. They existed—why worry about the next generation? And if there was no reproduction associated with intimacy, well, the intimacy was overrated to be honest. And at least with Looming there were no diapers to be changed.

There were a few exceptions. Cousin Penelope (she insisted on a human name, among other oddities), was old enough to be a parent and insisted that he refer to her as "Mother." Arkhew and Glospin picked up on what was supposed to be a private matter and thought it great fun to call her "Mother."

When he attacked them for it, they started teasing him about being "Mummy's little boy" and calling him "half-human." The label stuck; even believed for a time himself after a particularly difficult regeneration.

But the cradle was probably hers. She had made one in secret or bought it from an off-world trader, hidden it in a closet with a rag doll lying inside. Penelope never let anyone else see it except him. It always made him sad, for a reason he couldn't quite name.

Now he had an idea why. It was the same reason that Christians set a cross at the front of their sanctuaries—no one had died on one for centuries, but someone very important had once (and had come back to life, they claimed, but he wasn't sure about that). The cradle was also that paradox. No one had been born for centuries, but people had…once.

Penelope's peculiarities had rubbed off on him. He actually married someone. They had write a new ceremony, create new forms, and invent new words, since no one had performed the ceremony since the curse. They waited until replacements were Loomed and then brought three of them up in the Citadel, outside of the House.

He had a Family, of course, the House Lungbarrow. But he also had a family, a wife and children and even grandchildren.

And he never would have thought of it without that old cradle Penelope kept hidden in her room.

Now there was a Time Lord child. Melody Pond, who was also River Song. His enigmatic jailbird was a wonder in more ways than one.

Not only was she a murder, she was also a miracle.

_Frost in the fire and the rocking chair_

_Frost in the hearth, frost in the ladle_

_Children's voices in the air_

_Wind that rocks the empty cradle._

_-Lungbarrow_


End file.
